The legal battle against the European truck cartel shows no signs of slowing down in Germany. At the end of June 2025, legal services provider Truck Reclaim, in collaboration with the transport association Bundesverband Güterkraftverkehr Logistik und Entsorgung, filed a new class action representing approximately one thousand haulage and logistics firms. The case concerns nearly 15,000 purchases of commercial vehicles made between 1997 and 2016, with a compensation claim of around 85 million euros, in addition to further sums for accrued interest.
This latest legal initiative is also backed by three German trade associations: Amö, Bwvl and Dslv, which respectively represent companies involved in removals and logistics, in-house logistics and shippers, and forwarding businesses. It is the third wave of lawsuits promoted or supported by BGL against the truck manufacturers implicated in the historic cartel sanctioned by the European Commission in 2016. The first wave involved 3,200 companies with a total of 85,000 trucks and 600 million euros in claims, while the second saw the participation of 6,000 firms with around 100,000 vehicles and an overall demand of 630 million euros.
The case stems from a network of anti-competitive agreements among the main European manufacturers of commercial vehicles, including Man, Daimler, Volvo/Renault, Iveco, Daf and Scania. According to findings by the European antitrust authority, the manufacturers colluded on the sale prices of medium and heavy trucks, as well as on how to manage the costs related to the introduction of emission-reduction technologies. Five of these companies acknowledged their responsibility as part of a settlement with Brussels. Only Scania chose to challenge the sanction, triggering a lengthy legal process before the European courts.
